What happened to all the highend stereo shops

yes indeed

the internet, mainly...

then covid

HiFi stores can’t earn enough profit in a market with diminishing customers to afford the rent. The lucky ones own their property or have favorable long-term leases.

this is a good point... so many ground floor businesses, looking at them, you wonder how the heck they survive -- quite often is the answer is they own the building at a low historical cost, so rent is nil and property taxes are low, and these days, retail renters can be hard to find even if they wanted to rent out the space for income... so they stay, just hang in there

isn't it great when a perfectly nice discussion thread on hifi takes a hard left into politics and religion?

other thing i would add here, is that i really try hard not to take the bait of posters who have just joined, give no info of themselves in their profile, and seem to post and post all of a sudden on one topic only, just to get a rise out of the long time readers and users here -- responding just energizes the troll, giving them what they want, which is just to jerk chains

exception perhaps being when i smell an outright shill, or someone trying to dishonestly influence people’s hifi purchases, i do feel the need to call that out

@doyle3433

I had an excellent piece of chocolate cake last night.

i tried to be healthy last night, dessert was just a fresh berry salad with coconut cream

now, what is that we think happened to all the high end stereo shops???